I agree with your main point that rejection is painful, has negative effects on the culture, and we should think about how to minimise it.
But I wanted to add that in my post about whether EA is growing, I estimate that the number of people employed in EA orgs and the number of engaged EAs have both been growing at around 20% p.a. since 2015.
If anything, in the last 1-2 years I’d guess that the number of jobs has been growing faster than the total number of people.
There was a period maybe around 2015-2018 when the number of people was more likely to have been growing faster than the number of jobs, but I don’t think that’s happening right now.
Hey, thanks for the comment! Just to clarify because I may be too sleep deprived to track what you’re saying… I originally read that as proportional by percent but not by absolute numbers, right?
So if roughly 900 new people per year are considered engaged enough to count as part of the community, ~20% of that and ~20% of 650 would still leave a growing number of people in the community working EA jobs, and even ~30% or ~40% increase in jobs would still leave a growing absolute number of people in the community not working EA jobs.
(Again, not to say that this is bad necessarily, and as you noted there’s also people who were funded by grants or doing research or similar)
Yes, my figures were proportional rather than absolute.
I was mainly responding to:
EA organizations are growing slower or at pace with the overall EA population
This sounds like a proportional claim to me. My take is they’re growing at the same or faster pace as the overall EA population.
It’s true that if they both grow the same proportionally, the absolute number of people not able to get jobs will grow. It’s less obvious to me something is ‘going wrong’ if they both grow at the same rate, though it’s true that the bigger the community, the more important it is to think about culture.
Hey there,
I agree with your main point that rejection is painful, has negative effects on the culture, and we should think about how to minimise it.
But I wanted to add that in my post about whether EA is growing, I estimate that the number of people employed in EA orgs and the number of engaged EAs have both been growing at around 20% p.a. since 2015.
If anything, in the last 1-2 years I’d guess that the number of jobs has been growing faster than the total number of people.
There was a period maybe around 2015-2018 when the number of people was more likely to have been growing faster than the number of jobs, but I don’t think that’s happening right now.
Hey, thanks for the comment! Just to clarify because I may be too sleep deprived to track what you’re saying… I originally read that as proportional by percent but not by absolute numbers, right?
So if roughly 900 new people per year are considered engaged enough to count as part of the community, ~20% of that and ~20% of 650 would still leave a growing number of people in the community working EA jobs, and even ~30% or ~40% increase in jobs would still leave a growing absolute number of people in the community not working EA jobs.
(Again, not to say that this is bad necessarily, and as you noted there’s also people who were funded by grants or doing research or similar)
Yes, my figures were proportional rather than absolute.
I was mainly responding to:
This sounds like a proportional claim to me. My take is they’re growing at the same or faster pace as the overall EA population.
It’s true that if they both grow the same proportionally, the absolute number of people not able to get jobs will grow. It’s less obvious to me something is ‘going wrong’ if they both grow at the same rate, though it’s true that the bigger the community, the more important it is to think about culture.
Ah, yeah that wasn’t intended as my meaning. Will edit :)